“The thing I can’t forget is that Josh and
Benny would be walking out of the S-Train to
the production office, and I’d be walking out
of there, and they’d call or text me a picture
of this guy hanging out in the subway, and
they’d say, ‘We need this guy’s jacket, you’ve
got to go get this guy’s jacket. We offered him
50, you give him a hundred.’ I don’t have that
experience in film – it’s only through working
with them. And that’s what’s so cool. And,
y’know, working on films, you’re supposed to
have two or three of things in case anything
happens, but when you’re buying things off
eBay or off peoples’ backs on the street, you
can’t do that. And then you’ll fall in love with
a look one minute, and the next you’re like,
‘Nah, switch it up’, which is a big challenge
when you’re working on a film and need
continuity.”Credits: Good Time, Uncut Gems
“The first time I met Josh and Benny was at
their office, back before Good Time. We had
a mutual friend, which is why I came in. They
had never worked with a costume designer
before, but everyone was friends in the room
and it was pretty chill. I loved them after that.
We talked about Rob and his character and
what the movie was about – and I had just
finished another film, so I was pretty deep in
it, I was excited. And now with Gems, this is
the second film I’ve done with Morty, who’s
a friend of mine, and we have a very similar
style – it’s like, two brains are better than one
for the creative side.“For Gems, Morty and I were researching
so many characters, so I would go visit the
women, go visit the guys who just sell the
gems – there are so many different typesof jewellers just on that block, and we had
to figure out the differences between them
in order to figure out which kind of jeweller
Howard was going to be. I feel like the only
way to do a film is to fully immerse yourself
in it. I think it is a really important part of why
this is so authentic. Like Howard’s glasses- they’re rimless Cartiers, because Cartier
glasses are a staple in the diamond district.
We knew those glasses were a really big
deal for Howard. Josh and Benny have been
working on this for a decade and it is really
important to them, and you can really see it
in the film. We were going to the Diamond
District every day because they wanted us
to meet these real guys and be friends
with them, because they had developed a
relationship with these people too. Which
helps them feel more included in the film,
and that they’re part of the film as well.
They created a community in order to make
it special, and that is why it is so special.”
Credits: Good Time, Uncut Gems.
“For our first meeting, I went to their old
Midtown office which was this tiny hole-in-the-
wall, unmarked office building, and I walked
in, and I saw a massive King of New York
print, and next to that was an Akira print.
And I thought, alright, either we’re way too
similar for comfort and this is never gonna
work, because we’re bizarro-Seinfeld New York
Jews who have the same exact weird taste in
either phantasmagorical or completely realistic
shit and nothing in between, or this is gonna
be the beginning of a great romance. And
it was the latter. I remember their producer
was wearing this all-banana yellow jumpsuit,
hanging half his body out of the window,
smoking a cigarette. He was smoking American
Spirit Yellows which matched his outfit, and the
whole thing just looked so comical and insane,
and I didn’t understand what was going on.“Josh and Benny don’t slack on any element of
the filmmaking process. Each phase is taken
with as much seriousness as the last, and as
they proceed through this thing they get more
and more tired and it gets more and more
crazy because they’re not deferring to other
people. They’re not resting on their laurels.
There was a certain amount of stress on Good
Time because there was a lot of music, and in
terms of scope and the heft of the music and
what it was supposed to do it in the film – it’s
like a musical. I think I keep diminishing the
effort of Good Time because Gems was just
five times that! We had more time on Gems
than on Good Time for sure, but finding the
right voice, combination, orchestration and
feeling for this – that was hard. Really hard.
“In a way the Gems score is a
schizophrenic three or four-headed monster.
There’s a sweetness to the score that speaks
to Howard Ratner’s optimism and his budding
romance with his girlfriend Julia, and that
pulls a lot from weird 1970s European and
British library music, where you’d hear white
jazz motifs with flute. Then there’s this
epic, cosmic, wildly-orchestrated mixture of
synthetic and real instruments – like New
Age music that doesn’t really know how
to relax you because it’s too busy putting
on a big show. And these pieces are very
obtuse, strangely-shaped, with canyons and
valleys, then there’s the other side of the
score which is as if Good Time is a module
that’s been plugged in – a limb which has
become attached to this new body, and has
to coordinate with all these other parts.”022 The Uncut Gems Issue